Japanese Buddhist Modernism and the Thought of Sŏn Master Toeong Seongcheol 退翁性徹禪師 (1912–1993)

Abstract:Few scholars and followers of the Buddhist faith are aware of how much modern Japanese Buddhist studies have influenced Sŏn Master Toeong Seongcheol's thought. It is, indeed, a well-kept secret. However, as an instance, a close examination of Seongcheol's ideas on the Madhyamaka doctrine (chungdoron 中道論), and of his resulting interpretation of Chan-Sŏn 禪 history, reveals how strongly the scholarly position and the main arguments of Miyamoto Shoson 宮本正尊 influenced Seongcheol. This appears all too clearly when reading Chudo siso oyobi sono hattatsu 中道思想及びその發達 (Madhyamaka thought and its developments), Shoson's magnum opus. As a consequence of such Japanese influences, Seongcheol's Buddhist scholarship largely stems from a frame of reference defining all forms of Buddhism as sharing—and being reducible to—a fundamental, all-pervading, and ultimate essence. However, the one, entirely unified and interpenetrating system of thought, or so-called t'ongbulgyo 通佛敎, emerging from this frame and its resulting perspective render him incapable, not only of grasping the historical context in which the Madhyamika viewpoint he so unconditionally embraces was born, but also of seeing the problems and political implications its birth engendered. For that reason, Seongcheol's Madhyamaka ideology fails to avoid the pitfalls of fundamentalism, reductionism, and totalitarian tendencies, because it glosses over the multiple facets of Buddhism, and thus gives way to an unbalanced, oversimplified definition of it as the ''Religion of Awakening.''